Survivors pose in and alongside their bunks in a barrack of the Dachau concentration camp.
One thing is for sure. The prisoners in the Nazi camps had to endure the atrocious living conditions in which they were mercilessly forced into. Particularly in the Nazi labor camps, the prisoners were often forced to work without proper equipment, clothes, food, rest, or medical care. These came with brutal effects that lead to starvation, exposure, disease, and abuse. “According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, certain categories of prisoners in the concentration camps were worked to death under the Nazi policy of annihilating through work” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
In both the death and labor camps, the shelters were not at all adequate and sufficient. Barracks served as the prisoners’ housing in which prisoners slept crowdedly on three-tiered wooden bunks. Each barrack had only one washroom and toilet. The sanitary conditions in both types of camps were poor and significantly deteriorated after 1943. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stated that by January 1945, the barracks in the Nazi Concentration camps were overcrowded like a pack of sardines and because of the overcrowding problem in addition to being “aggravated by abominable sanitary conditions, it resulted in a typhus epidemic that spread throughout the camp[s]” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Rations of food for the prisoners were small and meager and the amount and quality of the food rations given to the famished prisoners decreased further after 1941. Also, horrendous medical experiments were often practiced on the prisoners against their will and often had gruesome, lethal results. To get a better visual sense of the living conditions in the Nazi camps, please click on the following link.
One thing is for sure. The prisoners in the Nazi camps had to endure the atrocious living conditions in which they were mercilessly forced into. Particularly in the Nazi labor camps, the prisoners were often forced to work without proper equipment, clothes, food, rest, or medical care. These came with brutal effects that lead to starvation, exposure, disease, and abuse. “According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, certain categories of prisoners in the concentration camps were worked to death under the Nazi policy of annihilating through work” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
In both the death and labor camps, the shelters were not at all adequate and sufficient. Barracks served as the prisoners’ housing in which prisoners slept crowdedly on three-tiered wooden bunks. Each barrack had only one washroom and toilet. The sanitary conditions in both types of camps were poor and significantly deteriorated after 1943. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stated that by January 1945, the barracks in the Nazi Concentration camps were overcrowded like a pack of sardines and because of the overcrowding problem in addition to being “aggravated by abominable sanitary conditions, it resulted in a typhus epidemic that spread throughout the camp[s]” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Rations of food for the prisoners were small and meager and the amount and quality of the food rations given to the famished prisoners decreased further after 1941. Also, horrendous medical experiments were often practiced on the prisoners against their will and often had gruesome, lethal results. To get a better visual sense of the living conditions in the Nazi camps, please click on the following link.